Artist's Statement: My collage references the hypocrisy of the US in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, a time when national leaders situated immigration as an essential element of the American nation while also excluding particular groups based on racial fears and stereotypes. The Statue of Liberty, a symbol of the hope and opportunity of the American dream, was dedicated in 1886, a mere four years after the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. It is located near Ellis Island, where many European immigrants were welcomed to the US, while immigrants from Asia were specifically excluded. This exclusion was intentional, an attempt to create a homogenous, white nation while cultivating the perception of the US as the “mixing pot” of global immigrants. In this regard, the US in the 20th century is not unlike nations in South America, such as Brazil, which, upon emancipation of most of its population of enslaved Africans in 1888, aimed to “Europeanize” and “whiten” that population to position itself as an advanced and prosperous nation.

My image includes the Statue of Liberty against the ocean and sky. In her shadow, there is a collage incorporating a variety of mediums and techniques: photographs, both of Chinese immigrants as workers and in their likely self-commissioned portraits; virulent newsprint posters and clippings; black pencil; pen and ink and watercolor--these latter two paying homage to the Chinese artistic style of ink wash painting, rendering visible the presence and influence of Chinese culture in the United States. The collage is meant to both embody the Chinese Exclusion Act and tell the story of Chinese immigrants, a narrative that was left out of textbooks and the media during this time, and mostly since then. The photographs portray Chinese railroad workers, well-dressed Chinese male immigrants, and Chinese immigrant families, while the posters scream a different message. By juxtaposing portraits and posters, I aim to humanize those subjected to racist slander and xenophobia and show the actual faces of those targeted by legislation. My hope is that this image makes viewers reflect not only on the significance of the Chinese Exclusion Act and its lasting implications today, but also to think more critically about the history of the US and the use of similar policies to exclude certain groups from the benefits of American citizenship.

Artist's Statement: I focus on Dr. Seuss because his work is one of the most powerful and widespread influences on children’s worldviews, including my own. In doing so, I created a sequel to The Sneetches, one of Dr. Seuss’s books on equality, to discuss Japanese internment for a child audience in his own style.

Through his imaginative characters and alien worlds, Dr. Seuss taught moral stories that could be accessed and appreciated by children and adults alike. However, many are unaware of Dr. Seuss’s earlier political cartoons, which strongly influenced his children’s books both in style and substance. Though much of his work preaches equality and acceptance, his political work was extremely racist towards the Japanese and contributed to a false image of Japanese Americans.

During the course of World War II, Japanese-Americans faced strong challenges to their citizenship and loyalty as Americans throughout the process of internment. Dr. Seuss’s cartoons stoked fears that they were spies and enemy combatants, when in reality they had nothing to do with the bombing of Pearl Harbor or the war. Interestingly enough, only Japanese-Americans who were interned during the war, not German-Americans (like Dr. Seuss himself) or Italian-Americans. Internment is a great example of how racialized citizenship may be -- and how fear and “other”-ing can result in such an extreme loss of civil rights.

I try through this visual project to rethink Dr. Seuss’s depiction of the Japanese before and after the war, and how his work shaped the American imagination of Japanese-Americans, itself often a culmination of their historical treatment of the non-white other, using borrowed terminology from past conquests. Dr. Seuss did not create these connotations, but he put images alongside them and used his fantastical characters to aggrandize these “racial war words."[1] My own Sneetches mini-book is a counter-narrative about Japanese internment—same style, different intent.

[1] Dower, John. War Without Mercy: Race and Power In the Pacific War. New York: Pantheon Books, 1993. https://hdl-handle-net.revproxy.brown.edu/2027/heb.02403. Accessed 13 Dec 2020.